Michael Miltenberger

Mr. Chairman, I have with me Patricia Gall, our legal support from Justice; Dr. Corriveau, chief medical officer with the Department of Health and Social Services; and, Mr. Dave Murray, deputy minister of Health and Social Services, for his last piece of legislation. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I am pleased to introduce Bill 16, Tobacco Control Act. This government is proud to bring forth legislation that builds upon and expands municipal bylaws and the existing Workers' Compensation Board regulations. I would like to recognize the hard work and thoughtful consideration of this bill by the Standing Committee on Social Programs. The committee's personal contributions in passing on the public's input has resulted in a bill that will help us greatly reduce the public's expose to second-hand smoke.

With this bill, we continue the process of denormalizing...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, the criteria was fairly broad by Health Canada. It was to build, to promote and improve primary health care services, and there were proposals put forward by the different authorities to do different things. In Yellowknife the one project was to do this integrated service. In Fort Smith it was to help move midwifery along. The other ones, we're going to get the information. The decisions were made by us and we submitted our list as a government, as a system, to the federal government to get the funding to flow, which then took a number of years, as...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, this primary health care transition fund, that Health Canada funded, was intended to improve access, accountability and integration of services as relates to the whole concept of primary care, and it allowed us in the Northwest Territories to advance 11 different projects, and we're going to get you that information. But the intent here was to look at program improvements.

When this was initially agreed to back in 2000, it was before we had nurse practitioners; it was before we had midwives; but it was when the concepts of integrated service delivery...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, I don’t have the detail on the other projects. I know that there were 11 and they were across the regions across the North, but I could get that information for committee.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, the fundamental issue, of course, is children in need of service and often protection. It’s done in a number of ways. The laws were changed a number of years ago so that it didn’t always require the children be taken into care, but there is foster care arrangements, there’s support and services to parents and families while a child is in care, there’s just general services to children, youth and their families if their child requires service but remains in the family home, there’s adoption subsidies to support special needs of a child who was in...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, the rationale for that decision was based on efficiencies; it was based on the need for coordination; it was based on the fact that we found out at one point, a year or so ago, that we had paid for over 1,800 bed days in Capital Health out in Edmonton for services that could have been provided out of Stanton, because without the coordination that we currently have in place, Stanton was routinely overflown as a result of referrals made by the different authorities and the different communities. This was part of our review of how we do business. We were...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair, the coming into force date is September 2006. Once this bill receives third reading and is given assent, we will be working with the Health and Social Services authorities to make sure that we inform all of the communities and all the involved people. There have been meetings with environmental health officers. There are going to be more in terms of how they are going to do the work. We are going to be communicating with all of the businesses. We are going to be working in conjunction with and trying to be as cooperative with the WCB as possible with...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The third-party accountability framework is designed to be able to recognize the work of NGOs. The health authorities, the DEAs are considered employees. They have collective agreements. They are part of our budgeting process. NGOs currently, in terms of when it comes to forced growth and other issues, are not. This third-party accountability was designed specifically due to the recognition of the fact by the government that this is an area that we would have to be able to better define so that we can address appropriately. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, this is an outstanding issue, as the Member has noted, and we have engaged the services of the HR department as it's newly structured. They’ve had one of their senior people who came over, in fact, from Health and Social Services, spearheading the work. I understand that we’re expecting a document to be available for our review by about the middle of next month. Thank you.